


By Her Own Good Hand

by alphahelices



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:20:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28437522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphahelices/pseuds/alphahelices
Summary: In the days when there are no more secrets, she points to Ilos as the start of it all. He remembers it differently.
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard, Kaidan Alenko/Shepard
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	By Her Own Good Hand

In the days when there are no more secrets, she points to Ilos as the start of it all. When they (the two of them) are common knowledge and the others ask questions, gentle or baudy, she cites the way their skin turned cold and their blood ran hot in the face of a mutiny and their frantic confessions. When everything is over and nothing has ended, when the reapers are gone and the world is still there and they are still in each other’s arms when the sun comes up, she breathes _thank you_ against his skin to that moment, before Ilos, when he knocked on her door. She refers to that night of tangled clothes on the floor and tangled limbs on the bed as _Ilos,_ nothing more, and he catches himself doing it too from time to time. But to him, Ilos was not the beginning. It wasn’t when she confessed or he confessed in earth-shattering proclamations that there were feelings, desires, _something_ there. It wasn’t loud or emphatic and neither of them were panic-driven.

To him, it started in silence, the night after Virmire. He was tongue-tied and more than a little drunk. They’d gone to Virmire three strong with Ashley at their side, and then Shepard had heaved him off the planet in her arms while the bomb _tick tick tick_ ed seconds off Ashley’s life. They’d risen off the surface, alone in the shuttle, silent as the planet tore to pieces beneath them. Two of three, they boarded the Normandy to the thrum of their crewmates. There were soft-voiced meetings and the aching sound of held breaths, and then someone broke out the good whiskey and Kaidan didn’t say no when they pushed a glass into his hand. A hundred races on a thousand worlds and they all turn to this drowning numbness in the face of grief, and shoulder-to-shoulder with aliens and friends Kaidan downed whiskey after whiskey in the hope of silencing the rush of thoughts in his brain. His crewmates drifted off to bed, their mourning ritual complete, and Kaidan was at a table full of emptied glasses.

He was not mourning yet. When his eyes closed he saw the look on Shepard’s face when she decided, when she _chose_ , when she knew she could only save one life and she turned to him, weak and broken and soaked to the bone. Her eyes were certain and her jaw was set and her hands did not shake as she lifted him from the ground and pulled him to safety.

He hadn’t argued. What a sin it is to be silent. The arguments came that night, one after the other filing through his brain, why Ashley should have lived and he should have died. He knew every moment he could have done something differently on Virmire, every split second action that could have changed the course of this disaster, and the greatest of all of them was the moment he looked at Shepard with her decisive eyes and said _nothing_.

Now there was whiskey in his veins and his crewmates were in bed and he was alone in the mess hall with a scattered set of empty glasses. His head ached. His throat burned. His clothes still smelled like the saltwater of Virmire; somehow there was still sand in his teeth. 

He thought he was alone, finally, one small mercy. There was one moment for him to breathe deep enough to feel the ache in his ribs, to feel something, and then the elevator door opened with a whisper and Shepard walked in. Her steps were gentle and muted in the quiet room, and she said nothing, but still it felt jarring when she took the seat across from him. She looked at him, over the table and the empty glasses, and she waited.

He looked back, and behind the alcohol and the regret what he felt most of all was _anger_. The way she came to him like this, so baldly waiting for his confessions of grief. A hundred times before she came to him and let him air the worries on his mind but this time, _this time_ it felt sick. She chose this. She chose this and she was waiting for him to say something, to comment on his being alive, on Ashley being dead, on the ashes of a planet in their wake. She chose this and now she expected him to come to her for comfort.

He said nothing. He was drunk. Who’s to say the words would come at all? 

It was the early days then and she was too good to drink with her crew, too somber, too upright. How hard she had to fight for respect in those days. Now she was across from him, sober, prim; he knew she hadn’t touched a drink all night, and he was covered in filth from a wreck of a planet and oozing liquor smell from every pore. 

And _he_ was the one she chose.

He fumed, silent, while she sat across from him, only waiting.

He said nothing, and she said nothing, and then she reached out for his hand on the table and wrapped her fingers around his. Her eyes did not meet his and for the first time he saw doubt on her face, her forehead creased with worry, and he thought, _good_. He wanted to see her regret. She ran her thumb over the gnarl of his knuckles, reading not the lines of his palm but the scars on his fingers. How long would he live? She’d already decided for him. His hand felt heavy in her delicate fingers. This dead weight she had chosen. She was weighing not his heart but his hand against a feather, look at those ill-begotten scars and burns, the chewed-down nails, the dried saltwater grit of his skin, and he wanted to say it all, confess his sins here at this empty-glass altar, this mess hall shrine.

Wanted to say _remember, I killed Vyrnnus, I lost control and a man died._

Wanted to say _remember, I have an L2 implant, you know that’s a strike against me._

Wanted to say _remember, Ashley was always the better shot._

He wanted to say _remember_ over and over again until she did it, until she really remembered, until time wound backwards and she chose Ashley on Virmire and left him to die, with his anger and his weakness and no new weight on his conscience.

He opened his mouth to say _remember_ and no words came out. On the table, her hand still cradled his. She looked at him then, finally, the doubt gone from her eyes, and tightened her grip on his hand. Against his skin, he felt her, felt that she had calluses too. Her knuckles, too, a mess of scars. His conscience may have been heavy but still her hands and her arms had been strong enough to lift him off the surface of Virmire, and still she held him, even now.

The thing that struck him in that moment was the fact that she was soberand she was holding his hand. No whiskey blurred her judgement and she still gripped his fingers in her own, her arm stretched across the table, reaching for him.

Boldly, drunkenly, he squeezed her hand. She squeezed back.

Their crewmate was dead and a whole world was dissipating smoke, but his hand was in hers, and her skin against his. He may have been drunk, but she was not, and neither of them was pulling away.

So she can claim all she wants that it started on Ilos. But he remembers her walking away from the mess table that night, no words exchanged (because what could be said?). His fingers were still warm from the heat of her hand. Maybe he wasn’t worth saving, but she saved him all the same.


End file.
